


Fierce Girl

by Bliss_Smith



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Backstory, Gen, scenes that wouldn't go away and leave me alone, the companion to video games as therapy, writing as therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bliss_Smith/pseuds/Bliss_Smith
Summary: Timeline is flexible, weaves in with Haven and Sacred Urn. My storyline puts it after Lake Calenhad Days/Touch of Grey/smut seriesThe line "your father would be very proud of you" just wouldn't go away, so I threw some words at it.  Headcanon/backstory for Bryce Cousland's Little Spitfire.





	1. Chapter 1

_Your father would be very proud of you_ hangs on, long past any audibility, until it becomes another scar on her heart. It went away while she and Alistair were traveling, but now that they’re back, now that they are once more a group, it comes back to hang around on the trip to find Brother Genitivi.

_At least Haven should take my mind off him_  she thinks.

~*~

By the time they get to the small temple on top of the mountain, it hangs on her like one of the dead bodies she’s left in her wake.  _Your father would be very proud of you_ and she would beg to differ. He was a master diplomat, a trusted advisor to the monarchs he served. What would he think of the carnage she and her party have wrought on this town that only wanted them to leave?

What would he think about the way she’s retreated into herself, cut off and adrift from the people she’s trying to lead? Even her beloved, who can only watch with mounting hurt at her distance. Would he be proud that she pitted them against a high dragon because she didn’t want to take the time to go for backup and can’t fathom what it’s like to fail at something she’s determined to do?

Haven was supposed to take her mind off him. It’s done nothing but dig him deeper, excoriate the wound that she’s been desperately trying to ignore for too long.

Her thoughts stink like the dead dragon right behind them, leaving her choking and desperate. She knows there’s nothing left to do but do it, finish this nightmare task.  _Maker, please, at least let me have a respite from this heartbreak,_  and if she needs any more proof of how wasted she is, it’s that she’s praying.

~*~

“You abandoned your father and mother, leaving them in the hands of Rendon Howe, knowing he would show no mercy. Do you think you failed your parents?”

_Well that’s the last time I’m going to pray_ , she thinks. Which probably isn’t the best thought to run through her head first but at least it gives her a chance to get a handle on her anger. She’s standing in front of a bona-fide religious miracle in the form of a spectral guardian, one she needs to let her pass. She’s so mad she could spit but she doesn’t know who she’s really mad at. All she knows is she can’t stop pressing forward, and to do that she has to answer this glowing asshole’s question.

Alistair is watching her closely. As much as she wants to turn to him, she knows she can’t. The further they go in this mess of a quest, the less she can look at him. The love and compassion she knows is shining in his eyes will be her undoing.

_Your father would be very proud of you_ and she would most strenuously beg to differ.

At least she’s able to lift her chin and look the guardian in the eye as she answers.

“I didn’t fail them. I sacrificed them.”

_Please can I be done now?_  she asks whomever might be listening, already sure the answer is no.

~*~

The sight of his ghost is somehow worse than her last look before Duncan pulled her out of the castle. It makes  _maybe_  impossible, makes her greatest heartbreak her unavoidable truth. He didn’t somehow live through Howe’s treachery. He’s not being held in a dungeon somewhere for his devastated and determined daughter to find and save him. He’s as dead as the scores of people on the path that’s led her here. 

“My dearest child. You know I am gone, and all your prayers and wishes won’t bring me back.”

She’d know that voice anywhere. This isn’t some trick of magic, some shade pulling half-formed memories from her head to make a mockery of what once was. This is what’s left of her father, one last blaze of energy to tell her what she needs to know.

“No more must you grieve, my girl.”

His fierce girl, whose very first memory is of his strong hands picking her up to swing her in the air, high and fast, the way she loved and the way no one else ever would. He was the only one who ever encouraged her to be as fearless as she wanted. 

“Take the pain and the guilt, acknowledge it, and let it go. It is time.”

Another memory, because why not stab herself some more? The only time she ever got sick, a bad fever she picked up from somewhere. She was sick enough to have the whole castle wringing its hands, but her father took it the worst. He sat by her bed for a solid week, never leaving unless she was asleep. And even then, there wasn’t a time she didn’t wake up to find him back in the chair, holding her hand and red-eyed from crying, from reliving the first weeks of her life, when she came too early and too small for anyone to expect her to live.

She wants to touch him, grab him, drag him back into her world because no, she’s not ready for this.  _No_.

“This is how it should be. Set your eyes on the horizon, do not look back, and do not falter.”

She’s being given one last chance to see how much he loves her, to see the proof of Wynne’s words in his eyes. She will always be his greatest pride and joy. Death cannot stop that.

“Now go, pup, and carry with you my love and forgiveness.”

One last chance for him to take care of her. He’s giving her his forgiveness, not because she’s done anything to be forgiven for, but because she needs him to. She can’t forgive herself until she knows he forgives her, too.

And now she does. One last gift from the man who gave her everything.

She doesn’t think she’ll be able to walk away, not a second time.  _Maker please don’t make me do it again_ , but there’s never a choice, is there? She lifts her chin and holds her head high.

_Do not look back, and do not falter_  and somehow, she finds a way to do that.


	2. Chapter 2

She waits patiently, as he has been for her. She hasn’t let him touch her, not since the quick kiss he stole right before they got to Haven. The minute she understood just what a mess she’d led them into, she started pulling away. She knows that’s a bad thing to do with him – it’s always going to leave him fearful and hurt – but there was no choice, not if she wanted to keep herself together. The worse things got the more she pulled away, so far that by the time they made it out of Haven, she was too lost to find her way to him. So much heartache, so many deaths, so many fears, and she was being crushed under the weight.

The long walk back to the campsite helped but not enough. She was still too raw to be around people and could only slip away while everyone else ate dinner and tried to put the misery of Haven behind them, tried to keep hold of the good they found there.

Now she waits patiently, knowing he’ll come find her when he is ready, and they can see just how well they’ve made it through this test.

~*~

She knows it’s him when he steps out from the trees. That she knows it’s him by the way he walks soothes her in a way, alleviating some of her fears about what she really loves about him. She holds her hand out behind her and bites back tears at the relieved sigh he gives.

“I’m sorry I pulled away. I know it hurts you when I do.” She wants to add more, keep babbling, maybe if she drops enough words on the subject, it will erase the pain she’s caused him.

He sits tight behind her, arms around her to hold her close. He doesn’t say anything at first and she doesn’t know why. His silence hurts in a brand-new way, one that leaves her both tearful and ruefully amused. Serves her right, doesn’t it?

“I can’t decide if it hurt or just scared me. Whatever it is, I know you didn’t mean for it to. You were doing what was necessary to get yourself through that nightmare. I just wish I could have helped more.”

“You helped just being there. I need you to know that, Alistair. No one would have been better off had you died instead of Duncan. I may be the mouth of this, but you’re the heart.” She presses back against him, one arm reaching behind them to place her hand on his neck. “You’re my heart.”

“Would he have liked me? Been happy to see us together like this?” 

She thinks she should stay like she is, keep her back to him so he can’t see the tears or the pain, but she needs to see him. Needs to look at him, because even the sight of him soothes her heart like nothing else can. She turns sideways, leaning up to kiss him, to run her thumb over his lips.

“He would have been beside himself to find someone else who is as delighted by me as he was.” It feels like pure ego to say that, but she knows it’s true.

“I know that wasn’t really him there but…”

She cuts him off with a gentle head shake. “No, it was him. Whatever magic is in that place is real. So was he.”

“You have his eyes.”

“Cousland blue,” said with a tearful smile. “It’s not the only thing I got from him, just the only physical trait.”

“What else?”

She knows he’s trying to lead her, let her find the place where she can let go of her grief. He’s taking care of her, in a way that’s all too familiar.

“According to several conversations I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, my greatest boon isn’t the massive set of brass balls I got from my mother, but the velvet tongue I got from him that I back them up with. And it never failed in those overheard conversations that someone wouldn’t snort and mention his self-confidence, that somehow comes off as far more arrogant and entitled in me because of the way he spoiled me.”

“Did he really, or were they just talking to hear themselves?”

She laughs and relaxes against him, as his body heat begins to unkink her tight muscles. “He did, shamelessly. In all ways, too. He gave me just as much time and affection as material things. People liked to think he’d let me get away with murder, but truth is I didn’t have to get away with anything. He taught me what it means to be a Cousland and then gave me free rein and unequivocal support in all my actions. He knew I would always behave in such a way to honor our name.”

“Even when you broke a hand?”

“Especially then. The only ones who got the rough side of his tongue over that were Fergus for dragging me off Faren instead of handing me his sword, and Faren’s father for expecting recompense for ruining his son’s bow hand. He told his father he’d better be damn grateful he didn’t exercise his right as Teyrn and my father to demand Faren’s whole arm to hang over the mantle in the great hall.”

“Would he really have done that?” he asks, laughing and shocked.

For some reason that gets the tears going again, a slow trickle that she knows she just needs to let happen. “Absolutely. He was Ferelden’s best diplomat but a complete savage when it came to me.”  

She can see more questions in his face, ones he’s probably too polite to ask—the ones too many people assumed they knew the lecherous answers to. She doesn’t want him to do that, be left with assumptions because he can’t find a way to ask  _why_  that doesn’t sound rude or crude.

“Mother had so many miscarriages after Fergus, they had to stop trying, but you know how it is, sometimes careful isn’t careful enough. Down the road she found herself pregnant with me, and I almost killed her. I came too early and too hard, half dead just from being born. Mother was half dead herself from blood loss and was completely unable to care for me, so Father stepped up. He spent weeks walking the floors with me, keeping me tucked in his shirt so I could feel his heat and heartbeat. He even held me while Mother nursed me because she was too weak to do it. He was determined that I would live and didn’t stop talking to me or let go of me until the healers declared me out of the woods.”

She wipes her eyes and tries to catch her breath, to talk around the utter heartbreak and anger of losing him. “I wanted to do the same for him and he wouldn’t let me. I would have stayed, I would have found a way to save all of us, I know it, but he wouldn’t let me.”

“You did right by him. By both of them. Hold on to that, love. You did what he needed you to do. You paid him back for keeping you alive by keeping yourself alive in his honor.” His voice is so soft, wrapping around her heart to hold it carefully.

There’s no way to argue that truth, nothing she can say that will either change the outcome or the staggering pain of it.  _Shh_ _,_ _pup, it’s okay, I’m here_ _._  She knows it’s only the memory of his voice, but it’s enough. He is here with her and always will be.


End file.
